Girls' Own Adventure
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: GinnyLuna femmeslash. When you follow dreams and sorrow into the Forbidden Forest, you never know what you might find. Maybe death, maybe love, and maybe the fae. Oneshot.


**Title: ** Girls' Own Adventure

**Pairing/Characters: ** Ginny/Luna

**Rating: ** M/R

**Warnings: ** DH spoilers except for epilogue. Sex, profanity, a few references to violence, and general weirdness.

**Disclaimer: ** J. K. Rowling owns all. I make no claim.

**Notes: ** Written for the hpcreatures fest for winnett, who requested a fae Luna with femmeslash. Beta-ed by the lovely and talented msmindfunk. About 7300 words long.

**Girls' Own Adventure**

Ginny ran.

The grass of the Quidditch pitch blurred past under her feet. Her hair whipped into her face, nearly as hard as it did when she was riding a broom. Her legs ached with her pace, but she didn't care. Her eyes were half-squinted shut against furious tears, but she could always tell herself they simply came from the wind.

Faster, and faster, and faster, and _faster. _Her throat burned as if she were swallowing snow. But she didn't care, she didn't _care_.

If she ran fast enough she could convince herself of that.

She had reached the eaves of the Forbidden Forest. She ducked under them without pausing and hurtled further into the woods. Swaying spots of sunlight dropped across her path; she slapped branches aside and sprang roots that curled up on purpose to trip her. Things bounded out of her way, not all of them having four legs. Sharp smells curled into her nose, not all of them familiar.

Ginny didn't care.

She stumbled at last, falling headlong into a small pile of musky leaves. Ginny shut her eyes and buried her face in them. Her searching hand found and crushed one so hard that she barely felt the shreds before she was digging her fingers back into skin. And then the air rushed out of her all at once and she lay there.

The thoughts came back, of course. They'd kept pace with her, and they were just waiting for the time when her defenses lowered and they could enter her head and make her furious.

Harry and Hermione and Ron had had their own special little adventure during the war, and they didn't want to let her in. Oh, they _said _they'd tell her all about it, but what actually happened was that they'd break off during the recitation of the story, catch each other's eyes, and then laugh. Or, worse, Hermione would shake her head a little, and when Ron or Harry continued talking, Ginny knew it wasn't the story they would have told her otherwise. They were keeping things from her because—because why? Because they didn't think she could handle it? Because they thought she was a little girl and they should preserve her innocence?

Ha. As if she had any innocence left after some of the things she'd seen the Death Eaters do at Hogwarts. _They_ hadn't seen Eloise Midgen's legs braided together and stuffed into her mouth, or Michael Corner's eye plucked out and bounced around the corridors. They hadn't heard his moans whilst he lay in the infirmary waiting for a new one to grow in. She had her share of horrors, and she'd grown to an adult among them. Her mistake, Ginny thought bitterly, lay in supposing that living through the war would make her any more mature in the eyes of anyone else.

Even her own mother had kept her from fighting in the final battle, and now she wanted Ginny to wear frilly pink robes and not think or talk about anything except dating and her NEWTS. Ginny understood why. If Molly could keep her youngest child still a child, then somehow the war never would have happened and everything would be better.

Except things didn't work that way, and if Ginny knew it, the all-wise war veterans should have known it, too.

She picked herself up from the little clearing where she'd fallen, shaking dirt out of her hair and snorting leaf dust from her nostrils. When she thought she'd cleaned enough of her face not to concern anyone who might see her, she began wearily picking her way further into the woods, head high and thoughts still churning.

For a long time, the dearest ambition of her life had been to date Harry Potter. But she'd changed since then. How satisfying could a relationship be with someone who thought she'd never grow up?

How long would it be until he could look at her and see a woman instead of a girl?

Well, she could show him, and the rest of them. If she had an adventure of her own in the Forbidden Forest, something daring and properly Gryffindor, they would have to acknowledge that she was different than they had thought she was.

Ignoring the slight niggling at the edges of her mind that insisted there was something wrong with this logic, Ginny kept walking.

* * *

Ginny hated to admit it, but she was fairly certain she was lost.

She stood shivering in a wide clearing that didn't look natural, with trampled grass around the edges and a broken tree in the middle. The tree looked as though it had been severed by something sharper than an axe or a Cutting Curse, given the deep slash in the center of the trunk that had cut it almost in half. Ginny imagined a creature with huge teeth, and then wished she hadn't.

She'd called out a few times, but stopped as she reflected how stupid it would be to leadthe predators to their prey. She'd used her wand several times to try and find the path back to Hogwarts, but it spun wildly on her palm or simply remained still and sulked. _Now _she could remember Professor McGonagall's warnings about how easily the ambient magic of the Forbidden Forest confused regular spells.

It was the third time she'd come to this clearing, which probably meant she was wandering in circles. Ginny sighed, gave the broken tree a dubious glance, and started Summoning leaves and bits of grass to make herself a bed. The sun had begun to set, and even though it was still September, it would get cold soon and she didn't fancy sleeping on the bare soil of the Forest.

"Hullo."

Ginny leaped straight up in the air and screamed. When she spun around, it was to see almost the last person she would have expected behind her. (The _last _person she would have expected was Harry. He would probably still be laughing with Ron and Hermione, and not even notice she was gone. Ginny was almost certain this relationship was not going to work out now).

"Luna, you scared me," she muttered. "What are you doing out here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Luna said. Her voice was soft, but clear, so Ginny thought she could have heard it on the other side of the clearing. "And yet, neither of us would gain any information that way. So I might as well answer your question first." She nodded, as though she had just finished a deep philosophical conversation, and focused brightly on Ginny. "Looking for a gate," she said.

"I don't think the Forest has any gates," said Ginny. "Do you mean a path back to Hogwarts?"

"Oh, Hogwarts is that direction," Luna said, and pointed to the ground.

Ginny sighed. She had never liked the way other students teased Luna and called her Loony, but sometimes she could see their point. "It can't be under us."

"It's not under us," said Luna, her eyes widening a bit. Ginny blinked. For a moment, she thought they actually shone with their own light, rather than merely reflecting the sunlight that fell through the branches, but of course that couldn't be so. "It's only in that direction. Directions change from day to day, given the rotation of the sun and the moon." She gave Ginny a sympathetic smile. "I didn't know you hadn't learned that yet, or I wouldn't have spoiled the surprise for you."

Ginny kept herself from rolling her eyes, but it was an effort. "Listen, Luna," she said. "I'm hungry, and it's getting dark. Can you please show me the way back to Hogwarts? I won't tell anyone that you were in the Forest or anything, if you want me to keep it secret."

"I have food," said Luna simply, and glanced around the clearing. "But we can't stay here."

"Why not?" Ginny stared at the broken tree and imagined a centaur rearing up to cleave it with his hooves. "Is there danger?"

"Oh, no," said Luna, sounding slightly shocked. "But other people need this clearing after dark." She smiled suddenly and dazzlingly at Ginny. "Besides, I thought you wanted an adventure, from the way you marched into the Forest. And we can't have adventures where there are other people watching. I don't want them finding the gate." She put out her hand.

Ginny blinked and accepted it, and found Luna leading her directly to the edge of the clearing where the brush seemed thickest. Ginny flinched, imagining briars catching at her robes and face, and managed to say, "Uh, Luna—"

But Luna raised a hand, and Ginny saw that some of the branches and thorns she'd been worrying about were nothing more than shadows and angles of light. She gave them a suspicious look anyway as she followed Luna through. They rustled at her as if hurt. Ginny told herself to stop imagining things. She already had enough to worry about, following a girl she couldn't understand through the Forbidden Forest at dusk.

She was thirsty, too. She licked her lips and wondered what Luna would say if she told her. Probably that they would drink moon-dew or something of the sort.

"You won't be thirsty after we go through the gate," Luna said.

Ginny frowned at her back in bewilderment. "How did you know I was thirsty?" she asked. "And I thought you didn't know where the gate was." If she could play along with Luna's delusions, at least it might help distract her from all the possible awful fates that pressed against the edges of her thoughts.

Luna turned around and gave her another smile. Her eyes really did shed their own light, softer and more silvery than the light of the moon that was beginning to rise. Ginny felt a shiver creep up her spine. She tried subtly to remove her hand from Luna's, but it had become very strong, or she was very weak.

"I knew because of the dream, and I'm looking for a different gate," Luna explained. "I already know where _one_ is, or I couldn't have found food and water." She cocked her head meditatively. "And perhaps you can only find this gate when you've given up looking for it," she said. "Some doors are like that. Stubborn things," she finished in a cheerful voice, as if she were talking about a Kneazle who refused to let her near its kittens.

"You're scaring me, Luna," said Ginny, and her voice had wavered up the scale in spite of herself. She was a Gryffindor. She shouldn't be so scared. But Luna had always made a _kind _of sense before, so that Ginny had thought she would learn to understand her if she just spent more time around her—if only because eventually she'd be as mad as Luna was. Now she was talking like someone who'd had an attack of the stress Mum had been afraid George would have after the war, with the shock of losing Fred. "Look, point me to Hogwarts if you know where it is, all right? Or let me go and I'll find my own way back there. But don't—don't take me any further, please."

Luna stopped and stared at the ground as if contemplating Ginny's words. Or maybe she was calculating the distance to Hogwarts. Ginny held her breath and hoped. The light coming from Luna's face was dimmer than it had been, wasn't it?

Then Luna looked up and laughed. Ginny froze. The sound was definitely strange, high and sweet like windchimes shaken too fast, and not human. She faced Ginny and grabbed her other hand, leaning so close Ginny could make out the separate gleams of light in each eye. The gleams were five-pointed, she thought.

"I understand now!" Luna said triumphantly. "You've never had anyone to explain things to you, and your last adventure was so uncomfortable. You don't trust them anymore."

"Them?" Ginny subtly pulled her hands back from Luna's for a moment, then gave up on subtlety and yanked. But Luna's fingers had grown longer and more slender, like the tendrils of vines, or so it seemed. They were wound about her wrists, pressed against her skin and pinning it to the bones and the veins. Ginny couldn't move, suddenly, and a glow had begun to shimmer about Luna. She seemed smaller than before, her face more pointed and angular.

As she turned and looked up at the moon hovering above the treetops, Ginny's eyes followed hers helplessly. The moon was full. Ginny swallowed. Could Luna be turning into a werewolf? But she'd never heard of shiny eyes and shrinking as part of the symptoms. If anything, werewolves got larger.

"_Now._"

And Luna burst into a run, dragging Ginny after her through the Forest. The trees blurred past on either side. Ginny, pelting after Luna at an awkward angle with both her arms gripped and dangling over Luna's shoulders, expected to trip at any moment. Instead, the tips of leaves brushed her face and her hair, and the soles of her feet curled away from nothing more violent than softened moss.

She understood when she looked down. Her feet had left the ground, and they rode through the Forest on a path of air that had formed beneath them, glittering with many separate points of pale light, like the Milky Way. Now and then her toes fell low enough to brush a plant, but it didn't happen often.

Ginny looked up in awe. Luna was still running lightly ahead of her, her motions tireless. She had let go of Ginny's arms, but Ginny could follow her without trouble.

"Who are you?" Ginny asked. This couldn't be the Luna Ginny had known for seven years at school.

Luna faced her for a moment and smiled. Ginny shuddered. Yes, Luna had changed. Her face was slimmer, with new angles, and her ears pressed back against the sides of her skull, thinner and more _pointed _than before. Her blonde hair had come loose and floated around her head, stroked by a wind Ginny didn't feel even when she moved her face in its direction. Her hair took up the unearthly light from her eyes as Ginny watched. Her fingers moved in directions they hadn't been capable of before; her knees bent and flexed like a grasshopper's. When she spoke, her voice had the windchime tone that had only haunted her laughter before.

"I'm Luna. I thought you knew my name." Luna cocked her head and added, "Maybe not my full name. That's Luna Marie Selene Xenophilia Lovegood."

"But you were human," said Ginny. "And now you're some sort of—magical creature."

"You can do better than that, Ginny," Luna said. They had never stopped running, but now she spun back and danced a full circle around Ginny before Ginny knew what was happening. Where her feet moved, the silvery path moved with them. "You probably know what I am. You just haven't allowed yourself to speak the name yet." Her voice turned soft and lulling for a moment, and Ginny's eyelids fluttered shut. Shadowy fingers moved over her face, so gentle she could pretend they weren't there if she wanted. "Speak it. You need to acknowledge a dream before it lets you go."

Ginny would have scoffed at that statement in a normal mood, and she knew it, but now it only seemed like good sense. "Yes," she whispered. "You're an elf."

"The only being you know by that name is a house-elf," said Luna. "And the dream that adopted me has another one. One you don't speak every day, one that moves you in a different direction."

"Fae," Ginny said, and the word fell from her lips like a flower.

"Very good," Luna said. Her fingers explored Ginny's ears this time, as if searching for their points. "You'll learn your directions yet. Now. You have a choice to make."

"I thought I didn't." Ginny shook her head, trying to awaken, but she stayed exactly where she was, on her tiptoes in midair with a fae girl feeling her face. "You took me with you whether I wanted to go or not."

"The dream came and found me because I called for it," Luna insisted. "I called for it in the midst of darkness and pain, and it came to me."

Ginny caught her breath and opened her eyes to stare at Luna. Luna stared back, shadows moving across her face like the darkness of a lunar eclipse. Ginny remembered that she had spent time in the Malfoy dungeons during the war. How long, Ginny didn't know.

_But any time at all as a prisoner of Death Eaters would be long enough._

"And it heard you call, too." Luna trailed her fingers down's Ginny's cheek and ended up cupping her chin with one palm that felt like warm starlight. "You wanted an adventure. You wanted to do something that would make the others, the ones who want to keep you a child, admit that you're an adult with your own choices. The dream heard you." Her hand tightened. "Will you come with me? Will you come with me into the dream?"

Ginny balanced on a sharp point of distrust for a few moments. What did she know about the change Luna had undergone? What if this adventure resulted in her never being able to brag to the others because she never came back?

But Luna had said she knew where a gate was, and she had attended Hogwarts this autumn like anyone else. And Ginny had always known Luna as the gentlest person in the school.

"All right," she whispered, before she could stop herself. A thrill trickled along her blood that felt like the thrill she'd had when she picked the lock on the shed behind her parents' house and took up her brothers' brooms without permission. "I'll come with you."

Luna leaned in and kissed her on the lips. Ginny paused in shock as the tingle worked through her, meeting and answering the thrill waiting in her blood. Together they became a wild enchantment that picked her up and whirled her around and around in mad circles until she felt as if she could reach up and touch the stars.

"Come," said Luna, and the moonlight reached out for both of them.

* * *

Ginny floated through a shimmering silvery country, insubstantial as mist under her feet and clouds around her eyes. She had to stifle the urge to call out several times, just to see if her voice would echo, and she also had to stifle giggling. She knew she wouldn't be able to stop if she began laughing now.

Luna drifted through the mist beside her, eyes closed in concentration and breathing so slow that Ginny could see the rise and fall of her chest more easily than she could hear her. Her hands clasped Ginny's again, opening and closing in rhythm with her breath, pressing her fingers and then releasing them. Ginny thought that alone would have been enough to lull her into a hypnotic state, without the mist and the tingling remembrance of Luna's kiss and all the rest of it.

Luna lifted her head, tilting it back like a flower too heavy for its stalk. Ginny followed her gaze half-unwillingly and saw the full moon hovering overhead, surrounded by a dizzy, twisted silver corona. The light flashed like molten silver as it twisted around the disk. The familiar scars and pockmarks that Ginny was used to picking out when she looked at the moon were suddenly filled in; its very wholeness made it look unnatural. She shuddered.

Then the mist escorting them whirled up in a fountain of reaching, plucking fingers and angular faces like Luna's new one. Ginny cowered back. She didn't have time to cry out, however, before the rustling tide swept past her, whispering complex promises and welcomes, and was gone. She and Luna stood on flat, polished green grass in the middle of a glittering grove of trees, with heavy white drops of dew hung like crystals on every needle.

Ginny cast an uncertain glance around. They had left the Forest on the edge of autumn; here was winter on the edge of spring. Or spring on the edge of winter, she corrected herself, stamping on the thick green grass under her foot. It pushed back, more resistant and springy than the grass she was used to walking on.

She cleared her throat. "Is this the place in front of the gate?" she asked.

Luna's eyes opened slowly. Light still lingered on the corners of her cheekbones, in the shadows of her ears. "No," she said. An echo seemed to trail her words, speaking them a few moments after she did, but Ginny couldn't actually pick out a separate voice when she concentrated. "That _was _the gate." She extended her arms wide, fingers waggling. The pine trees nodded and bowed back, and the crystal drops on them chimed, high and fragile and foreign enough to make Ginny shiver. "This is the place on the other side."

Ginny wanted to complain that she hadn't known this adventure would include a whole different moon, but that might have seemed petty or scared. And she _wasn't _going to be scared. She looked around again, but still saw only pine trees, grass, crystal drops on the trees, and moonlight. Even if the moonlight was so brilliant it was like seeing by a silvery sun, this wasn't what Ginny would call an adventure. "Well, it's pretty, but coming to a different place isn't what I wanted," she said.

Luna gave her a brilliant, patient smile, the first patient smile Ginny had ever got that didn't make her feel infuriated. Luna smiled as if they shared a secret, not as if she knew more than Ginny did. "I know," she said. "And the adventure is waiting for us—" She paused and half-closed her eyes, then pointed into the forest with a sudden stab of her finger. "There!"

Ginny spun around and stared expectantly. For long moments, she still saw nothing. Then the shadows of the pine trees shifted.

The strangest creature she had ever seen in her life stared at her. It was purple, and lumpy in the oddest places, as though Hagrid had broken the Experimental Breeding Ban to cross a hippo, a unicorn, a flying horse, and a dragon. It raised its rounded head, and Ginny winced in anticipation of a bellow, though when it came it was weirdly sweet and resonant, like a hunting horn. Then it turned and waddled into the trees. From that angle, Ginny could see the single horn that started out on its head but dangled down towards its back like an old sock.

"That's a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, isn't it?" she asked, glancing at Luna.

Luna laughed breathlessly. A new silver mist was sparkling around her, and as Ginny watched, it rose like a cresting wave beside her and formed into a silvery horse. The horse was as odd as the Snorkack, with a swan-like neck that let it double its head back until it rested on a wither and legs so long they bent and flexed in the middle like an accordion. Luna made a movement into the air that was halfway between a leap and a flight on a broom, and landed gently on the shining, curved back.

"Why are you standing there?" Luna said, and her voice had changed yet again. Now it had the resonance of the Snorkack's call. She lifted a hand through which the moonlight passed and spun a web, turning her fingers into long bending leaves and then flippers, like a seal's. And then she dropped her hand towards Ginny and it was normal again. "This is part of the adventure. A hunt."

"Are we—going to kill something?" Ginny thought she'd had enough of blood during the war.

Luna gave her a smile that was completely at peace and yet completely joyous; Ginny didn't see how she managed it. "Not permanently."

Either she made the decision for Ginny or Ginny's body made the decision without consulting her mind, because the next moment she was seated on the silvery horse behind Luna and they were rushing through the pine trees. Needles slid around them and sighed past them. The horse's hooves rose and fell with the regularity of a heartbeat. The moonlight shed a scent of spice in Ginny's nostrils.

And then the horse began to run so fast that a broom couldn't compare to it. Ginny thought she would fly off for one thrilling, terrifying moment, but her hands remained securely on Luna's waist, and Luna was reaching back to clasp them and entwine her fingers with them, as she had reached back over her shoulders to carry Ginny along before.

The forest began to change, too. Now the trees were silver, now white, now the pale green of new spring leaves. They were bowing like willows in the wind, and then dancing like couples gliding across the floor at the Yule Ball. No, not couples, Ginny thought, her wonder increasing as her hair batted across her face and yet seemed to enhance the sight rather than detract from it. Like girls, free and proud and strong, dancing by themselves, their leaves long and heavy as hair, their roots working like feet. She would have liked to reach out a hand and touch one, but she still couldn't let go of Luna.

No, she didn't _want _to let go of Luna. She leaned forwards and pressed her face against Luna's back, and discovered at least one source of the spicy scent. Before it had been something Ginny didn't recognize, sharp enough to make her mouth water; now it was saffron, which she knew from some dinners her mother made. And then it shifted again, and Ginny closed her eyes and shivered.

"We're joining the others," Luna said, voice serene. "Look at them, Ginny."

Ginny lifted her head and saw that they had passed into a country of shifting lights and shadows. The dancing willow trees, or maidens, had vanished. Instead the shapes washing along beside them resembled more horses with swan-necks and long legs, but these were brown and green and golden. The riders on their backs were taller than ordinary people, with pointed ears and angular faces when they glanced sideways, attired in white and green. Ginny heard laughter with the sound of harps following it, or perhaps the laughter _was _harp-music, and bells to complement it. The horses left the ground and flew above it, or sprang over it like deer, or folded their legs to their chests between one impossibly lengthy leap and another. No matter how they ran, though, they kept pace with the impossible speed Luna had set.

Ginny laughed, and her laughter whirled away from her and became part of the crowd of sound traveling with them. One horse stopped long enough to neigh in appreciation, or at least Ginny thought it was appreciation. And she could think that if she wanted, couldn't she? The hunt was so unlike anything she had ever been a part of that she had to close her eyes and let new meanings arise in her mind. She could make her own meaning here.

Something sang and buzzed past her ear. When she lifted a hand briefly from Luna's waist to swat at it, she touched the pointed tip of her own ear instead.

She felt a hot bubble of panic trying to surface in her mind and break the spell, but Luna glanced back, smiling, and her voice was a wispy, breathy thing that Ginny could not imagine as a source of pain. "This is a place of change and transformation. When you leave it, you will be as human as you ever were." Her smile transformed to a glitter like sunlight off metal. "And more than human, at the same time."

Ginny leaned back, accepting that, and saw the hunt changing around her yet again. Now they were passing through a palace, walls and corridors curving away from them. The leaping horses briefly became tapestries, carvings on doors, the gloriously wrought mantels of fireplaces with blue flames blazing inside them. Ginny saw fae faces looking back towards her with expressions of ethereal amusement, and wondered what changes the horse and she and Luna might have gone through.

Then they were pounding through a golden-green summer forest in the midst of full sunlight, and their shadows stretched long behind them, as long as shadows Ginny dimly remembered from the evenings of her childhood when the sun never seemed to set and the play never seemed to stop. Leaves touched her cheek and her ear and were gone. A cool tongue licked her throat. The other fae riders were clad only in green now, and rode sideways on high jeweled saddles, or facing forwards with no tack at all, their legs clasped securely around the barrels of their horses. They played flutes and horns and sang; Ginny could not tell which music came from throats and which from instruments.

And the Snorkack appeared ahead.

It raised its head and belled a challenge. Its form had become more graceful, though not in the same way as the horses that Luna and Ginny and the other fae rode. It had grown into its strength, it seemed, so that now the lumps and even the ridiculous horn dangling down the back of its head were part of a rounded vision that Ginny thought she could glimpse from the corner of her eye if she tried hard enough.

And if she had time. The Snorkack was rearing on its hind feet, feinting back and forth, clumsy legs carrying it quickly enough to make the horses dart back. The fae were flinging their hoods from their heads and clamping their legs more firmly around their steeds, their faces narrow and intent. Ginny noticed for the first time that none of them carried weapons, though before she had seen gleaming plumes about them that suggested feathered arrows. No blades, no bows, no wands. They circled their horses around the Snorkack, seeming reluctant to be driven more than a few feet away from the beast, but with no purpose that Ginny could see. She wondered if that was a clue to the strange words Luna had spoken, when she said that they would kill nothing permanently.

And then Luna slid down off her horse's back and approached the Snorkack.

The Snorkack reared higher and lashed its blunt tail, uttering a low hiss of warning. Luna disregarded it entirely, with the same air that Ginny had seen her disregard her Loony nickname. When she was a few light steps from the Snorkack, she extended her hands and cupped them around its neck, though her palms only brushed against air. The Snorkack hissed again and thrashed as though against an invisible net.

And then it began to change.

Ginny could see the transformations sliding over it as they had slid over the fae riders and their horses during the hunt. One moment it lay dead, bleeding horribly from a wound in its side, and Luna crouched above it with a knife extended and ate its heart. The next, it had trampled her underfoot, and Ginny cried out in spite of herself at the image of Luna lying with her hands splayed around her and her skull cracked and leaking. Then it was moving captive through a ballroom in which the fae lords and ladies danced, moving tamely at the end of a golden leash. The Luna with it in that incarnation scratched behind its floppy ears, and the Snorkack made a snuffling sound of contentment.

And more shadows, more illusions, more changes, faster and faster. The Snorkack danced like a tame Muggle bear. It charged into the middle of a burning house to rescue Luna from certain death. It stood beside Ginny—she caught the horse's satiny mane when she saw herself there—and threatened her brothers for doubting her. They needed to understand that someone who had ridden through the middle of Faerie, or wherever this was, and hunted a Snorkack was not someone who needed to be protected from danger.

Luna stood with the Snorkack on a green hill above the Hogwarts lake and spoke words to it too soft to hear. In the distance, Ginny could hear ugly shouts. This was a vision of a reality where Luna had taken the Snorkack back into the wizarding world, she thought, and people who could not understand it or her affection for it were coming to take it away.

Ginny uttered a protesting shout and flung herself off the horse. Luna turned her face towards her, eyes closed as if dreaming, cheeks lightly flushed.

As she passed within the shadows, Ginny changed, too.

Her soul bulged, and she could see a hundred flickering possibilities. A Ginny who had the seed of Voldemort within her soul from Riddle's diary, and collaborated with him to bring down darkness on the wizarding world. A Ginny who had fought in the final battle after all, and forced her family to respect her. A Ginny who had sneaked along with Harry, Ron, and Hermione on their adventure, and who didn't need to be left out. A Ginny who had ventured into the Forbidden Forest on a full moon night and met a werewolf instead of a fae girl.

Those were the most dramatic ones, but others existed, and they exploded away from her, narrow corridors of vision broadening as she came to believe in them more securely. She had children at sixteen. She had children at twenty. She captured the dragon Harry, Ron, and Hermione had stolen from Gringotts and had a ride into the heavens that persuaded her she wanted to be a Dragon-Keeper like Charlie. She became a professional Quidditch player. She saved a kitten from drowning. She stood with her head bowed and her hands clasped together, tears dominating her face, at her mother's funeral. She walked arm-in-arm with Harry, with Dean, with Michael Corner.

But rising above them all, and shining like a moon, was Luna's face.

And Ginny knew why Luna had promised her an adventure. She did not need to accept all the futures as legitimate, or decide on only one she wanted and exclude the rest. She needed, however, to accept them all as possible selves if she were going to change. If she had _form _to her dreams, rather than merely wishing for things to be different, she had made the first and most difficult step towards adulthood.

The fae always made a change in someone else's lives when they met them. But the choice to reject the change remained with the human. The people who did woke in the morning with their handfuls of gold changed to dried leaves or haunted by visions of a loveliness they would never recover and which would drain their hearts dry. Or they never woke at all; the fae danced them to death and left their rotting bodies in the forest.

Those who accepted the change came out better and stronger and more glorious than they had been.

Ginny sprang through the last of the shadows and landed lightly at Luna's side, holding her hand. The Snorkack had vanished. The fae lords and ladies had vanished—though Ginny was certain she had seen them applauding in the last moment before they went. They stood in the middle of a great, green, warm room, with rustling walls that Ginny thought might be made of either living trees or life-like wood. The ground beneath was soft with moss, which mounded up to the side of them to form a bed. Luna shone like the moon, and Ginny was flushed with laughter and desire.

Luna looked at her with her head cocked to the side. "There are so many gates," she said. "And you can go back through any one of them, now that you've been in the land that lies on the other side."

"I know that," said Ginny. The knowledge had been handed to her like the knowledge of what happened when one rejected the change the fae offered. She felt light, and free, and strong, like a tempered sword blade swung by an expert hand. She stepped closer to Luna. "But what if I don't want to go back through the gate yet? What if I don't think the adventure is over?"

"That's all your choice, of course," Luna said seriously. "And there will always be other gates to go through."

"Yes," said Ginny, and lifted her head and kissed Luna on the lips.

Luna's mouth felt cooler than it should have been, as if she'd been drinking moonlight, but Ginny warmed with pleasure all the same, and then Luna's fingers swooped down the temporary points of her ears and to her shoulders, and her robes melted away. Or maybe it was the sensation of wearing robes that melted away. Ginny became aware that Luna was naked then, shining all over and through, and had been for some time; it was only that the fact had been of no importance until now, so she hadn't noticed it.

They lay down on the bed of moss and kissed for a long time. Ginny told herself she shouldn't be afraid to touch another girl's breasts, to work her fingers between another girl's legs, but she also didn't need to be in haste. And she wanted to explore every small touch possible between their faces at first, from a resting of cheek on cheek to the clack of teeth, and the way that Luna's hair felt as it drifted down onto her neck. Different, very different, from the stubble of the boys Ginny had kissed in the past.

But then, everything about tonight was different.

She squirmed when Luna ran her hands over her breasts, partly from embarrassment and partly from wonder at the contrast. Of course, then she saw her skin had the same pale glow, as if it had become transparent to stars and moon, that Luna's did, so _that _was all right.

Luna's breasts were softer than Ginny had expected, and also cooler, and also more of a handful. Ginny let her head lie turned to the side, her cheek resting in the valley of skin between them, whilst she marked the side of the left one with her tongue and teeth. Luna quivered beneath her, her heart as quick as the horse they'd ridden. Ginny laughed and used her tongue and teeth separately next, instead of together.

Luna was the one who had led her into this adventure, but Ginny was the one who led now, sucking hard on Luna's nipples because she could and then sucking on her stomach for the pleasure of making her utter little squeals of ticklish delight. Then Ginny rolled upright and eased in between Luna's legs, carefully aligning them. Her hips felt spread wide as she arranged herself on Luna's lap. She doubted she would have felt brave enough to try this on one of the beds in her room in Gryffindor Tower, raised from the floor as they were. But here she could try several different positions before she found the perfect one without being embarrassed, and enjoy the soft sticky noises between them as she rocked back and forth. Luna's hips came up sharply that first time, more gently afterwards. And Ginny gasped and wound the fingers of one hand in Luna's hair as her wetness brushed against Luna's wetness, as her sex trembled and opened further, as the sensation grew so intense that she jumped like a spooked horse.

Luna lay there laughing with and not at her, though even if she had been laughing at her that would have been all right, and rocked back, and Ginny was no longer sure which pair of lips or which fingers belonged to whom, and the green and the white around them built up like a picture of a spiral Hermione had shown Ginny once, babbling that it was the source of all life—

And then they finished the spiral, and Ginny's thighs tightened and shook as she came, and she felt the orgasm from her toes to the tips of her pointed ears, and she felt her joy in being with Luna in a deeper place still.

* * *

"Ginny, where _were _you?"

"In the Forbidden Forest," Ginny answered casually, dropping her muddied robes on the floor of her bedroom and reaching into her trunk for a set of clean ones. She was quietly, pleasurably aware of the soreness between her legs—she and Luna had taken full advantage of the length of the night on the other side of the gate—and the continuing sensitivity of her skin that made her clothes seem to rasp across it. She stood up and stretched, then turned to grin at a scandalized Hermione in the door.

"But that's _dangerous._"

"So's riding a dragon and breaking into Gringotts and destroying Horcruxes," Ginny said, and grinned more widely to show she was teasing. "But not dangerous enough to keep you from doing them."

"Well, but—" Hermione looked flustered, shifting the heavy book she held from one arm to the other. Ginny pitied her for a moment. She suspected she'd had the better adventure, one that left her with nothing but good memories. "But I was with two other people," said Hermione. "Both of them boys."

She suddenly looked further flustered. Ginny suspected she hadn't meant to say that.

"And did they have to protect you?" Ginny looked thoughtfully at her. "The way I've heard the story—what small parts of it I've been allowed to hear—you protected _them_ more often."

"Well, I," said Hermione, and frowned.

"You don't have to tell me everything if you don't want to," Ginny said, and stepped in until she was facing Hermione from a few inches away. "Just like I don't have to tell you everything. But I wish you wouldn't keep silent because you think I'm a little girl who can't handle the truth. I'll assure you that some girls can handle a great deal. You should know that, since you're one of them yourself." She raised her eyebrows. "And adventures in girls' company can be just as enjoyable as ones with boys, and as safe."

Hermione looked simultaneously fearful and fascinated. "Ginny, who were you _with_ last night?"

Ginny winked at her and walked towards the showers. As she passed the open door of the bedroom, she heard Ron calling from the bottom of the stairs, "Is she here? Is she safe? I'm going to _kill_ her! She didn't tell anyone where she was going!"

"What should I tell him?" Hermione asked anxiously, turning to stare at her.

"Tell him—" Ginny paused as if giving the answer long and careful consideration, then winked at her again. "Tell him to stop being such a hypocrite, and sod off."

"_Ginny._"

"It'll be good for him," said Ginny, and walked into the loo. As she passed the mirror, she glanced into it, and saw herself briefly with an angular face, red hair braided with moonlight and falling past sharply pointed ears.

Then she was plain old Ginny Weasley again, unadventurous and ordinary and a little girl, the way her brothers would see her.

_But the really great thing, _she thought, as she stepped under the shower spray and fingered a bite mark that Luna had left on her shoulder and which might be replaced even if it was healed now, _is that both can be true at once. It's all a matter of which adventure I choose._

**The End.**


End file.
